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Funny Stuff on Book Resellers and Dynamic Pricing at Amazon

I have been keeping an eye on the pricing figure of R for Business Analytics at Amazon.com and have watched it fluctuate between 49$ to 59$ while it is currently at 50$. (Incidentally- Per Capita GDP of India is 3700$ per year or ~$10 per day)

My point is

why should a used book reseller offer to sell the same book at a HIGHER price,

while a new book reseller offers to sell the same book that Amazon is selling (in stock) at a higher price.

On top of that, these resellers have hundreds of thousands of ratings from delighted book buyers (of other books) who were very happy at buying the same book (used or new) at higher prices including upto twice the price.

Funny Stuff , huh!

I guess this has something to do with the discount that Amazon offers- since it basically does an average from the minimums of new book resellers and old book resellers. Only thing- how come all these resellers are basically scalping the same book legally, and

cui bono? ( or who benefits? ) from this dynamic pricing. Add in that Amazon itself kind of encourages book reselling and trading(?)

When you buy this book now for $50.17 and sell it back later for a $10.03 Amazon.com Gift Card,
it could cost you as little as $40.14.

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3 thoughts on “Funny Stuff on Book Resellers and Dynamic Pricing at Amazon”

I’d really like to know how some of these sellers manage to get so much feedback from customers. Granted, we don’t sell at the same volume but only a small percentage of customers take the time to leave feedback for us even though we ship immediately, don’t drop-ship or order in, pack carefully, and include a cover letter and a receipt. I’ve experience awful delivery time, terrible service and disgustingly inadequate packing with many of the “mega-sellers” and yet them seem to continue to pull in the mega feedback ratings. What gives? How do they do it? At one point, I purchased a couple of things from these guys to see whether they were offering any sort of return incentives, etc. but they were not. In fact some of them would not even answer emails about delivery.

Many of the more expensive copies are being offered – multiple times, in some cases, at varying “conditions” – by sellers who do not have ANY copies in stock. When they get an order, they try to find a copy and have it dropshipped to the customer by the seller.

These sellers quite simply upload millions and millions of “titles” – some out of print, some in print – to Amazon – so there are many titles where they won’t sell anything (if Amazon, for example, has this title in stock itself), but they don’t care. As can be seen from their feedback, they still sell plenty!

Read the feedback in detail to find the negative comments and you will note “they cancelled the order and then listed it a higher price” or “they accepted the order and then cancelled it” or “they sent the wrong book” or “the book was described as new, but has highlighting all through it”